The parallel universe where Mitt leads

To talk with any working Republican political operative these days is to hear the same tale of woe: a grim accounting of the past few weeks, a dash of gallows humor and a measure of hope that President Obama is still beatable. Never in question is that Mitt Romney is trailing — the private surveys these strategists see for their down-ballot clients make that clear. The only question is by how much.

But hanging up the phone or clicking out of e-mail is to find a parallel universe on the right. On TV, talk radio and especially the Internet is a place where the swing-state polls that show Romney losing are not just inaccurate but part of an intentional plot by the heretofore unknown media-pollster axis to depress Republican voters. In this other world, Romney not only isn’t losing — he’s on the verge of a convincing victory.

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“I believe if the election were held today, Romney would win by 4 or 5 points,” trumpeted Dick Morris on Fox News last week, predicting a win for the GOP ticket in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In public polls right now, Romney is losing in each of those states. But, Morris said, that’s because the data are all wrong.

“People need to understand that the polling this year is the worst it has ever been,” said the onetime Clinton svengali turned conservative pundit.

Conservative talk radio king Rush Limbaugh senses something more nefarious in the media and university polls.

“They are designed to do exactly what I have warned you to be vigilant about and that is to depress you and suppress your vote,” Limbaugh told his listeners last week, after bringing up swing-state surveys from The Washington Post and CBS News and Quinnipiac University. “These two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over.”

There has always been a divide between the Republican consultant class and conservative media figures. Operatives must dwell in the real world because their jobs depend on winning and losing. The likes of Morris and Limbaugh have different incentives. They want to build their email lists and listening audiences and there’s no faster way to conservative hearts than to kick the dreaded mainstream media. And when it’s well after Labor Day of a presidential year and the Republican nominee isn’t faring well, reassuring the home team that there’s just a scoreboard malfunction offers a seeming dose of logic to the situation.

But the Internet has let the alternate campaign reality flower this fall in a way that’s both striking and depressing to political professionals and pollsters. One website, unskewedpolls.com, even readjusts the public polling to include more Republicans in samples. The results: Romney leads in nearly every national poll released in September. Of course arbitrarily reweighting polls is wildly unscientific, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans like Limbaugh and even Texas Gov. Rick Perry from mentioning the site.

“Always nice to get unfiltered, or in this case ‘unskewed,’ information,” Perry tweeted last week with a link to the page.